Talonflame, The Scorching Pokémon. In the fever of an exciting battle, it showers embers from the gaps between its feathers and takes to the air.When attacking prey, it can reach speeds of up to 310 mph. It finishes its prey off with a colossal kick.

Overview

Here is our special guest speaker to bring you this week's Talonflame Overview is Blue Harvest's roommate!
"What's the Pokemon? Is it Talonflame? Oh TALONFLAME. THE FIRE BIRD POKEMON. It has a warm body. Good for incubating eggs. And it can probably learn Fly because it has wings. It most likely can learn Fire Spin, or other fire based moves? Umm. I don't know its stats though but it looks looks like it's pretty fast! It doesn't look strong in battle... Mostly good for special attack? These are all guesses, I haven't played the game. Hmm. TALONFLAME IS A KICK BUTT POKEMON THAT LOOKS FREAKIN' SWEET. Weak against Water? Strong against Grass!! And... umm... uh... uhhh... Ground maybe!!!?? Weak against Rock also. And Electricity. Man hes weak against a lot of things. That sucks. I'll bet you he can learn Brave Bird. If he can learn Roost he would be pretty okay... What? He can? Well then he's pretty good."
Pokemon master roommate's opinion aside, Talonflame is the best non-legendary bird in the game. Talonflame has become so dominant that we are even seeing weird things like Ancientpower Heatran and Occa Berry Excadrill to beat the mighty sky raptor. Having Gale Wings Brave Bird gives it the most powerful priority move in the game, overpowering literally every other priority move including Absol's Sucker Punch and Arceus's Extremespeed. Chances are if you play online or pay any attention to competitive battles then you have already seen enough of this mighty bird to know how dangerous it can be. I think I can hear Delphox crying.
Positives
- Priority Brave Bird is nightmarish. Almost nothing is safe... even some resists like Jolteon and Thundurus are afraid of multiple hits. If your Pokemon can't tank a Brave Bird then it can not be a setup sweeper, period.
- While its base attack and defenses are low Gale Wings allows you to run Adamant and invest in bulk making the frail bird deceptively powerful and tough.
- Flying is paired almost flawlessly with Fire meaning only Rock and a few dual types resist both Talonflame's STABs. Talonflame has very few counters and the few it does have can be overpowered.
- Though its movepool is limited it has just enough tools at its disposal to devastate pretty much everything in the game.
- Fire / Flying has a vast number of resistances and immunities that lets it switch in easily. If you can overlook the Stealth Rock weakness and plan accordingly it is actually very easy to switch in and completely walls several things like Sylveon and Scizor.

Negatives
- Stealth Rock weak. This basically forces you to run aggressive Rapid Spin support or Defog, or else you will be lucky to get more than two Brave Birds off in a game.
- 81 base Attack isn't THAT much. You need either Choice Band or Swords Dance to sweep.

Abilities

Flame Body: The opponent has a 30% chance of being induced with BURN when using an attack, that requires physical contact, against this Pokémon. Talonflame learns Fly and has Flame Body allowing it to assist with hatching eggs and Flying in-game. It shares this with Volcarona and Moltres, though Moltres's hidden ability STILL hasn't been released. Hidden Ability (Available): Gale Wings: All Flying-type moves have their Speed Priority increased by 1. This is one of the best offensive abilities in the game. You might be wondering why something with 126 base speed needs MORE speed. Well that's because this allows Talonflame to not have to run Jolly or invest fully in speed to reach your full devastating potential. Gale Wings is so powerful that Talonflame alone was probably the only thing keeping Blaziken from being banned for so long.

Talonflame is a terrifying wall breaker. Due to Gale Wings Talonflame can run Adamant and bulk. This means it reaches the approximate stats of a Jolly Pokemon with 252 Speed and 252 Attack with 102 base HP, 94 base Attack, and unlimited base Speed. This is fairly bulky and powerful and INCREDIBLY fast. Brave Bird off Adamant Sharp Beak'd off that Attack stat stings. After a Swords Dance it will OHKO pretty much anything that doesn't resist it, and even some things that do like Jolteon. Flare Blitz is your seldom used secondary STAB to incinerate the occasional Scizor or Skarmory who just can't take life anymore. Swords Dance is the setup move of choice which allows you to boost your Attack to insane sweeping levels. Not even Hippowdon can survive very any +2 Brave Birds. Roost is surprisingly easy to use on something so frail because Talonflame has a lot of resistances and forces many switches. The EVs look random but actually serve a purpose. 252 Attack maximizes the damage you can do. 60 Speed outruns Excadrill so you can Flare Blitz it. 192 HP reaches an odd HP number so Stealth Rocks do slightly less damage while the last point is dumped in Defense to tank Bullet Punches a little better. If Mega Pinsir Quick Attacks are beating you Talonflame can instead run 208 Speed to outrun it, Brave Birding it to death.

Choice Band Talonflame is pretty scary. You know how strong Scizor Technician Bullet Punch is? Talonflame Brave Bird has about 50% more power than even that! Banded Talonflame smashes the world with its mighty Brave Birds, but it still has Flare Blitz to take care of the Steels and Electrics that dare to challenge you. U-turn can pick away at Rotom Wash and take a solid chunk out of Tyranitar. Me First is mostly filler but it could have some hilarious moments copying Garchomp Outrage or something.

An overlooked set is Bulk Up. Talonflame's bulk is less than admirable but its typing is decent defensively (as long as you keep it away from rocks). By running a Specially Defensive set you can set up all over Heatran and Bulk Up on some walls like Forretress without much fear. After a couple Bulk Ups Talonflame can even survive some weak Stone Edges, especially with effective use of Roost. The EVs here focus on bulk but you can run an offensive set too. Then again if you're doing that you might as well just use Swords Dance.

If Heatran, Tyranitar, and Rotom Wash are slowing you down you can try Natural Gift. The base power of Natural Gift has increased this gen making Liechi Berry a 100 base power grass move and Salac Berry a 100 base power fighting hit. With Stealth Rocks both berries will OHKO Tyranitar while Grass KOs Rotom W and Fighting slays Heatran. While you lose out on running another item for essentially a silver bullet to push through your counters this does have massive potential to utterly annihilate teams that rely on one of those Pokemon to stop Talonflame. One important thing to note is that you should resist the temptation to run Acrobatics here. Acrobatics is useless until you have consumed your berry and while many teams run one of the three targets that the berries would beat not every team does, and those that do might not even switch in. Running Brave Bird ensures Talonflame will always be battle ready without forcing you to use Natural Gift first.

Basically the first set but with Flying Gem + Acrobatics instead. This set has about as much damage on the first strike but after the Flying Gem has been used it ends up hitting about 25% weaker but without the terrible recoil of Brave Bird. The major downside here is that Flight Gem has yet to be released, and until it does this set will be impossible to use.

Other Options

Tailwind, Will-O-Wisp, Fly, Steel Wing, Overheat and uhh... nothing else I guess.
Gale Wings affects all Flying moves, so Tailwind is viable on the Banded set as a suicide move or really any of the other sets over Swords Dance or Bulk Up. Tailwind in a pinch can allow Talonflame to temporarily grant double speed to its team so something else can win the fight if the fire bird can't.Will-O-Wisp totally screws with incoming Tyranitar, but does little to Rotom W, nothing to Heatran and less than just spamming Brave Bird to almost everything else.Fly is mentioned just because it exists. Also using a 0 Speed IV Talonflame with an Iron Ball means everything with 116 Speed or more can't touch you. It works like this - Talonflame uses Fly, and Gale Wings kicks in sending you into the sky at +1 priority. The next turn your speed isn't boosted and the opponent fires at nothing, where you go second and hit with a slower Fly. If you're bored and looking for "troll" sets you could mess around with this for fun. It isn't reliable though.Steel Wing hits Tyranitar, but you have U-turn... Perhaps you REALLY hate Carbink... it is a "rock with eyes" after all.Overheat is worth mentioning just because with a Life Orb it can really rip a chunk out of Hippowdon and Landorus T, though +2 (or +1 due to Intimidate) Brave Birds do about as much.

Double & Triple Battle Options

Talonflame can support with Tailwind and Quick Guard while doing heavy damage with Brave Bird or Acrobatics. It isn't weak to any common priority besides predictable Aqua Jet and it isn't really afraid of Earthquake spam.

Countering Talonflame

Talonflame is seriously one scary bird. The three main counters are Heatran, Rotom Wash, and Tyranitar. Heatran needs Ancientpower or Toxic to win but generally does well at taking Talonflame down. Rotom Wash is by far the best counter as it shrugs off every common move besides the rare Natural Gift. Tyranitar doesn't like Banded U-turns but otherwise slaughters Talonflame without much effort. Besides that... not much. Hippowdon, Gliscor, and Landorus-T all can survive a +2 Brave Bird but need to run Stone Edge and actually hit with it to win.
That's it. Literally those are the only things that can beat Talonflame reliably with Stealth Rocks. However Talonflame needs either Choice Band or a Swords Dance boost to sweep past tankier things and if it lacks that stuff like Zapdos, Zygarde, Kyurem, Garchomp, Gyarados, and Dragonite all beat it. If lower tier things are an option Unaware Quagsire does well, as does physically defensive Lanturn. If you run Talonflame and have trouble with other fire birds you can just run more speed EVs. Even max speed works. Mandibuzz can tank a +2 Brave Bird and destroy Talonflame with Foul Play (or should I say... Fowl Play? HEH. Get it... because... birds......). Keep in mind Extremespeed bypasses Gale Wing's priority so Dragonite, Zygarde, and Lucario all can check damaged birds.
Most of all the biggest check to Talonflame is Stealth Rocks. If rocks are down Talonflame will be forced to either Roost immediately or try to kill something off before dying, which due to recoil will usually doom the bird no matter what it does.